Optical MIMO transmission using Q-ary PPM for atmospheric channels

The use of multiple laser transmitters combined with multiple photodetectors is studied for terrestrial, line-of-sight optical communication. The resulting multiple-input multiple-output channel has the potential for combatting fading effects on turbulent optical channels. In this paper, the modulation format is repetition Q-ary PPM across lasers, with intensity modulation. Ideal photodetectors are assumed, with and without background radiation. Both Rayleigh and log-normal fading models are treated. The focus is upon both symbol/bit error probability for uncoded transmission, and on channel capacity.